3.4.2. Using do-notation at the prompt

GHCi actually accepts statements
rather than just expressions at the prompt. This means you can
bind values and functions to names, and use them in future
expressions or statements.

The syntax of a statement accepted at the GHCi prompt is
exactly the same as the syntax of a statement in a Haskell
do expression. However, there's no monad
overloading here: statements typed at the prompt must be in the
IO monad.

Prelude> x <- return 42
42
Prelude> print x
42
Prelude>

The statement x <- return 42 means
“execute return 42 in the
IO monad, and bind the result to
x”. We can then use
x in future statements, for example to print
it as we did above.

GHCi will print the result of a statement if and only if:

The statement is not a binding, or it is a monadic binding
(p <- e) that binds exactly one
variable.

The variable's type is not polymorphic, is not
(), and is an instance of
Show

The automatic printing of binding results can be supressed with
:set -fno-print-bind-result (this does not
supress printing the result of non-binding statements).
.
You might want to do this to prevent the result of binding
statements from being fully evaluated by the act of printing
them, for example.

Of course, you can also bind normal non-IO expressions
using the let-statement:

Prelude> let x = 42
Prelude> x
42
Prelude>

Another important difference between the two types of binding
is that the monadic bind (p <- e) is
strict (it evaluates e),
whereas with the let form, the expression
isn't evaluated immediately:

Any exceptions raised during the evaluation or execution
of the statement are caught and printed by the GHCi command line
interface (for more information on exceptions, see the module
Control.Exception in the libraries
documentation).

Every new binding shadows any existing bindings of the
same name, including entities that are in scope in the current
module context.

WARNING: temporary bindings introduced at the prompt only
last until the next :load or
:reload command, at which time they will be
simply lost. However, they do survive a change of context with
:module: the temporary bindings just move to
the new location.

HINT: To get a list of the bindings currently in scope, use the
:show bindings command:

Prelude> :show bindings
x :: Int
Prelude>

HINT: if you turn on the +t option,
GHCi will show the type of each variable bound by a statement.
For example:

3.4.3. What's really in scope at the prompt?

When you type an expression at the prompt, what
identifiers and types are in scope? GHCi provides a flexible
way to control exactly how the context for an expression is
constructed. Let's start with the simple cases; when you start
GHCi the prompt looks like this:

Prelude>

Which indicates that everything from the module
Prelude is currently in scope. If we now
load a file into GHCi, the prompt will change:

Prelude> :load Main.hs
Compiling Main ( Main.hs, interpreted )
*Main>

The new prompt is *Main, which
indicates that we are typing expressions in the context of the
top-level of the Main module. Everything
that is in scope at the top-level in the module
Main we just loaded is also in scope at the
prompt (probably including Prelude, as long
as Main doesn't explicitly hide it).

The syntax
*module indicates
that it is the full top-level scope of
module that is contributing to the
scope for expressions typed at the prompt. Without the
*, just the exports of the module are
visible.

We're not limited to a single module: GHCi can combine
scopes from multiple modules, in any mixture of
* and non-* forms. GHCi
combines the scopes from all of these modules to form the scope
that is in effect at the prompt. For technical reasons, GHCi
can only support the *-form for modules which
are interpreted, so compiled modules and package modules can
only contribute their exports to the current scope.

The scope is manipulated using the
:module command. For example, if the current
scope is Prelude, then we can bring into
scope the exports from the module IO like
so:

(Note: :module can be shortened to
:m). The full syntax of the
:module command is:

:module [+|-] [*]mod1 ... [*]modn

Using the + form of the
module commands adds modules to the current
scope, and - removes them. Without either
+ or -, the current scope
is replaced by the set of modules specified. Note that if you
use this form and leave out Prelude, GHCi
will assume that you really wanted the
Prelude and add it in for you (if you don't
want the Prelude, then ask to remove it with
:m -Prelude).

The scope is automatically set after a
:load command, to the most recently loaded
"target" module, in a *-form if possible.
For example, if you say :load foo.hs bar.hs
and bar.hs contains module
Bar, then the scope will be set to
*Bar if Bar is
interpreted, or if Bar is compiled it will be
set to Prelude Bar (GHCi automatically adds
Prelude if it isn't present and there aren't
any *-form modules).

With multiple modules in scope, especially multiple
*-form modules, it is likely that name
clashes will occur. Haskell specifies that name clashes are
only reported when an ambiguous identifier is used, and GHCi
behaves in the same way for expressions typed at the
prompt.

Hint: GHCi will tab-complete names that are in scope; for
example, if you run GHCi and type J<tab>
then GHCi will expand it to Just .

3.4.3.1. Qualified names

To make life slightly easier, the GHCi prompt also
behaves as if there is an implicit import
qualified declaration for every module in every
package, and every module currently loaded into GHCi.

3.4.3.2. The :main command

When a program is compiled and executed, it can use the
getArgs function to access the
command-line arguments.
However, we cannot simply pass the arguments to the
main function while we are testing in ghci,
as the main function doesn't take its
directly.

Instead, we can use the :main command.
This runs whatever main is in scope, with
any arguments being treated the same as command-line arguments,
e.g.:

3.4.4. The it variable

Whenever an expression (or a non-binding statement, to be
precise) is typed at the prompt, GHCi implicitly binds its value
to the variable it. For example:

Prelude> 1+2
3
Prelude> it * 2
6

What actually happens is that GHCi typechecks the
expression, and if it doesn't have an IO type,
then it transforms it as follows: an expression
e turns into

let it = e;
print it

which is then run as an IO-action.

Hence, the original expression must have a type which is an
instance of the Show class, or GHCi will
complain:

Prelude> id
<interactive>:1:0:
No instance for (Show (a -> a))
arising from use of `print' at <interactive>:1:0-1
Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Show (a -> a))
In the expression: print it
In a 'do' expression: print it

The error message contains some clues as to the
transformation happening internally.

If the expression was instead of type IO a for
some a, then it will be
bound to the result of the IO computation,
which is of type a. eg.:

Note that it is shadowed by the new
value each time you evaluate a new expression, and the old value
of it is lost.

3.4.5. Type defaulting in GHCi

Consider this GHCi session:

ghci> reverse []

What should GHCi do? Strictly speaking, the program is ambiguous. show (reverse [])
(which is what GHCi computes here) has type Show a => a and how that displays depends
on the type a. For example:

ghci> (reverse []) :: String
""
ghci> (reverse []) :: [Int]
[]

However, it is tiresome for the user to have to specify the type, so GHCi extends Haskell's type-defaulting
rules (Section 4.3.4 of the Haskell 98 Report (Revised)) as follows. The
standard rules take each group of constraints (C1 a, C2 a, ..., Cn
a) for each type variable a, and defaults the
type variable if

The type variable a
appears in no other constraints

All the classes Ci are standard.

At least one of the classes Ci is
numeric.

At the GHCi prompt, the second and third rules are relaxed as follows
(differences italicised):

All of the classes
Ci are single-parameter type classes.

At least one of the classes Ci is
numeric, or is Show,
Eq, or Ord.

The same type-default behaviour can be enabled in an ordinary Haskell
module, using the flag -fextended-default-rules.